Nintendo of Europe: “Fanmen don’t want extra Wii storage.”

Hey, do you want to be able to store those new WiiWare impulse buys without having to delete and redownload those ancient VC artifacts of yours? Of course you don’t. You are fanmen. Fanmen are too cool for that; you don’t mind having to grease your elbows in order to game. Geeks and otaku on the other foot? They’re rabid. Ravingly rabid.

As is always the case with Nintendo’s press events nowadays, the dirty word ‘casual’ was raised at its WiiWare preview, only to be dismissed in favor of a distinction between gamers and non-gamers. Playing these semantic games is fine, but when a pertinent question about the limited Wii system memory was raised, Laurent Fischer, managing director of marketing at NOE, easily slipped into talking about how “geeks and otaku” were the only people who would want this issue addressed. This is oversimplifying something that will only become increasingly important as Wii developers explore the console’s online service, whether through WiiWare or DLC, and is of concern to not only a niche section of the market that wants to buy into that content.

See fanmen, you guys are above that. You were hardcore enough to buy the games, why would it bother you to endure the recurring, casual download process that takes longer than it probably would for you to play the bite-sized games? Don’t be petty like your geek-taku comrades. Suck it up.